What Do Marketers Fear The Most?

What Do Marketers Fear The Most?

PUBLISHED

29 October 2015

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For the scariest things in marketing this Halloween, let’s harken back to these classic monsters of the horror genre:

Frankenstein

While startups in other fields are advised to simplify their story into a crisp elevator speech, ad tech takes pride in its complexity and jargon. The result is an endless barrage of offerings claiming to perform some critical function that no one else can do. Their collective arguments offer an advertising stack with more bolt-ons than the big guy himself.

Vampires:

Investigations into viewability and fraud have revealed an underworld of bloodsuckers. They’ve taken the lifeblood of digital marketing and extracted it to feed their evil phantoms. Millions of viewers have disappeared from sites like vampires’ reflections in mirrors, revealing that no living things are actually there. What will it take to put a stake through the heart of these ghouls?

Zombies

They’re supposed to be dead, yet they continue to walk the earth. As marketing requires more real-time tools, the TV upfronts plod along with their 1970s business model. While consumers yearn for more value from the companies they transact with, we try to capture them by lurking between them and their desired destination. Despite new models of business partnership, marketers and their agencies cling to a fee model that rewards the hours spent instead of the results achieved. Multiple blows have yet to crush these zombie brains.

Doug Ryan

PRESIDENT, NORTH AMERICA

Doug works with the national capabilities leaders across the agency, including Account Management, Media, Strategic planning, S&A, and Technology to create more value for clients using the agency’s combined and core strengths.